Accuracy Plays a Key Role in Admesy's Success

Abstract

ADMESY WAS FOUNDED IN 2006 BY THREE FORMER PHILIPS ENGINEERS—Ruud Bouten, Marcel Janssen, and Peter Franssen—from the Philips Mobile Display Department that produced displays for phones. While active in creating display testing solutions, they noticed that if you make displays in volume, there is a need for test/calibration on color and light, because the color would deviate and lead to a displeasure with the image.

In the past, people could adjust aspects (such as color and brightness) on older TV models themselves until they were happy with the image. But on mobile phones and devices, there was a clear need for calibration. And with the sheer volume of phones the industry was beginning to produce, this was not possible.

The idea for a company came through “frustrations” from the engineers who could spend weeks setting up factories, only to have someone “bump” something and affect the settings. Could they create a company making measurement equipment for use in a production line or lab? This as a market was not “major” enough for Philips (who only had minor internal measurement equipment at that time), so Bouten, Janssen, and Franssen set the groundwork to begin their own company, now known as Admesy.

Inside laboratories, spectrometers and measurement systems could calibrate displays with accurate precision. But the three engineers noted that when they would implement similar measuring techniques in production lines or factories, the equipment's reliability was not effective in these settings. They would fly to China or Korea to set up production lines, install the instruments similar to the ones used in their lab, and arrive back home, only to get a call a week or two later that someone disturbed the settings on the spectrometer, so they would need to schedule a return visit.

The engineers noticed two approaches in measurements. One was utilizing accurate spectrometers and colorimeters used in the engineering lab, but if you placed them in a production line, the different environment and users would cause it to break. And it often was too slow or expensive. The second one was using more affordable, less accurate colorimeters, usable in the production line, but its accuracy was not sufficient. The goal was to achieve the necessary level of accuracy but in a form factor that was robust and efficient enough for a production line application.

They began by attracting investors in 2006–2007. They worked for Philips during the day, and designed their products in the evening. By 2008, everyone had quit their daytime jobs, and they hired their first mechanical engineer. Initially the new business grew, but not quickly. Larger potential customers were understandably skeptic when considering a small, four-person start-up company in the Netherlands. So Admesy began with smaller projects (measurement systems for LED lights and carpets, reflectance measurement for gloss) that involved niche measurement equipment. They then attracted the attention of some major companies. Steven Goetstouwers, current CEO of Admesy, joined the company in 2012 when the need for scaled-up production began to escalate. In 2013, they received their first major line for one of the biggest display manufacturers. And with approximately seven to eight staff members, they worked around the clock to meet incoming demand.

“We wanted to be the guys in the production line. We never pretended to be the smart kids with three PhD titles. Instead, we wanted to build a product that could be used in the production line—the ones who understood it and knew how to work with it,” said Goetstouwers. “I sometimes joke that we are blue collar in a white-collar world, but that sort of captures us.

“We set up this whole idea on how to manufacture our products as well, with a high level of automation and ensuring that complex tasks could be done by non-engineers. The first colorimeters were made but required manual calibration tests. This meant the production engineer had to analyze and evaluate the data to confirm the product performance. So during the production run, we had a brainstorm. What would our ideal production line look like?

We came up with many ideas, such as a climate-controlled cleanroom, automated calibration systems, and controlled production steps with tablet-based production manuals—making it easier for operators to know and follow all steps and quality inspections. Most of those we couldn't afford back then, but over time, we built automated calibration systems, quality inspection systems, and customized cleanrooms. Now it's fun to see. Every task is perfectly defined in a series of down-flow assembly tables, which helps to minimize potential mistakes. This is coupled with quality inspections, calibration steps, and verifications. If I go into one of our cleanrooms and see the manufacturing lines, everything is basically what we envisioned during that brainstorm but even larger and better.”

Admesy's mission is to measure color in a world of light. The company provides its customers with test and measurement equipment based on color- and light-measurement principles with a focus and passion for system and industrial production-line integration. They achieve this by providing unique instruments with high speed and accuracy, with a good inter-instrument repeatability that is easy to use and integrate. To calibrate millions of displays or CE devices, all measurement systems in production lines must provide accurate data, line-to-line and device-to-device. This occurs at high speed so the measurement does not become a production bottleneck or cause failures while operating 24 hours a day year after year. Many of the Admesy devices are used non-stop in production environments, some of them for more than 10 years.

Their customer base includes LCD/OLED panel, smartphone, and consumer electronics manufacturers, as well as those who make niche LED and analytical or transmissive applications.

They started in a 15 m² lab space with tristimulus colorimeters, which are still an important part of their product range. Initial technology focused on filter and calibration accuracy. Their filter technology has grown to be the basis for many of their products and sets them apart from competitors.

Now, they have a 165 m² ISO 7 2D production cleanroom, a 250 m² controlled-production space where they produce spectroradiometers, colorimeters, and light meters, and a 250 m² space that is available for expansion (Fig. 1). Other facilities include a large bulk and detail warehouse and high-end in-house CNC and milling facilities located at their headquarters in Ittervoort, the Netherlands, with technical and sales support in China, South Korea, and Japan.

In the photonics industry, Admesy is now a mid-sized measurement company, with 40 employees. “It would be difficult to make schedules or discuss planning if you don't understand more of the details. We know exactly what you have to do to assemble a product. We can have discussions with the production team to see if we can make something sooner or more efficiently and have serious real-time talk instead of going through layers of management. We are very hands-on,” said Goetstouwers.

“We design all products with production lines in mind. This forces us to think about scaling, measurement speeds, product-to-product variations, and reliability. Most competing products are coming from a lab background.”

Some of their initial challenges involved scaling up production while maintaining a minimal production staff. They started with the automatization of parts for production and calibration very early on, which is still one of their major advantages (e.g., automatically aligning spectrometer benches). The production crew consists of 10 people in the warehouse and production. “You can do more with less through an incredibly efficient production system,” said Goetstouwers. “I'm proud of us for having pushed the bar over the last few years, where we were the first to reach a certain accuracy or measurement speed with our products.”

Goetstouwers works alongside Bouten, who serves as his technical companion. “One of the things I wanted to do quickly was prepare all procedures for growth and flexibility, so we could grow without compromising our mission or our products and their quality.”

When it started, Admesy mainly manufactured colorimeters. Based on requests from customers, they moved into other product groups. Customers wanted spectrometers for their validation lines. Many production systems are spot meter-based, which feature a light meter, colorimeter, and spectrometer. Initially, Admesy did not have a 2D camera, which they needed for a full portfolio for the display industry to serve R&D and production questions when it comes to color and light. The second generation of their 2D imaging system was successful in measuring keyboards.

There are two principles when it comes to measuring 2D images on displays: an image and a center spot; the latter is measured with a spectrometer or colorimeter. The center spot's data are used to calculate the other data on an image. These systems (spot meters) often are used in production lines and not outside of manufacturing because they are less flexible (rigid). In this market, XYZ imaging (taken three times, each with a different filter) is fairly common. Admesy did not dive into this market for a while because of the lack of accuracy (with filter characteristics), but since 2019, they have invested heavily in filter technology. To have good yields, they pushed for uniform filters. Now these Admesy imagers are as accurate as spot meters, spectrometers, and colorimeters (Fig. 2).

“Our overall best-selling products are our spot meters, the most recent being the Prometheus series, ranging from the Prometheus light and flicker meter, the colorimeter, to the Pritchard optics viewfinder spectrometer (Fig. 3). Of the colorimeter and its predecessor, we have sold a lot of the Hyperion series. They are used mainly for white-point adjustment, color measurements, and gamma tuning but are also fast enough for response time and flicker measurements,” said Goetstouwers.

One of the ways they keep pushing technological limits is through the recent development of their filter technology. “We are under the constant influence of technology developments in the display field as they create new points of attention for measurements. This is actually one of the fun things for us, as it pushes continuously and also asks for creative solutions,” said Goetstouwers.

Admesy also is active in the local photonics environment in the Netherlands, promoting photonics in general and helping to bring that information to schools. Goetstouwers is a board member of the PhotonicsNL association, which provides local guest lecturers even at primary schools. This is part of a regional project where companies present talks to build an early interest in technology and propagate the importance of photonics to the economy and community.

“We've given lectures at primary schools, where they are still very curious and open. When you open up a spectrometer, they suddenly realize that whatever color of light they are seeing consists of this full spectrum inside. So they think it's white, and then they realize there's a whole rainbow inside. The most surprising is how well they understand, and those moments are amazing and so much fun,” he said. There are also higher education, in-depth presentations (internships on spectroscopy) for more advanced students.

For the display market, Admesy has a couple of new products being introduced within the next few months. But besides the display market, their spectrometers offer good potential in other high-end spectroscopy markets, which is part of a business development plan for the next few years. Admesy will feature their Helios series and a combination of their viewfinder spectrometer with a calibration light source at Display Week 2024 (Fig. 4).

“We are always looking at how you can make something more accurate when it comes to spectrometers, colorimeters, and reference spectrometers. We've found a way to manage the calibrations better, which for the customer means that you can keep displays identical much easier than before. It's a different philosophy, but one that is fully validated (e.g., with reference labs). It's where two sides of the company meet because it's more accurate, but it also makes life easier for the customer because procedure-wise, they are keeping all of their equipment at a certain level. It's a spin-off that is fully due to our ION beam coating technology and capacity, because we manage to improve the actual spectrometer and combine it with a very stable and fully monitored calibration light source.”

Manufacturers want to ensure that their products “act” identically. They will measure a sequence of colors on displays, and the data are combined, giving each display an adjustment matrix to scale the various colors. Admesy provides the objective data. “There can be a factory in Vietnam and a reference lab in Silicon Valley, and they will give you exactly the same data for the same display,” said Goetstouwers. These data can be used to adjust displays accordingly. “You can't make one good product. You have to make hundreds of identical ones.”